Reality Echo
Earth remains the volatile prize of aeons of war and domination by two panterrestrial races. Returning the fight to these inhuman overlords, the Cerberus rebels are the champions of the planet's postapocalyptic dark ages.They spark a uniquely human resilience and courage to stand down the forces of infinitely powerful, perhaps unstoppable entities in the ongoing war to retake Earth for humanity. The Bluegrass range, ripe with secrets and magic, hides the operating base of a race of monstrous genetic mutations, faithful servants of an ancient overlord. As Kane and the rebels stage their reconnaissance, the shocking new face of an old nemesis enters the fray. As this crossspatial cyborg replicates himself as Kane and breaches humanity's last defense, he may well succeed in wiping the mountains–and their inhabitants–off the face of Earth permanently.
Читать Reality Echo онлайн беплатно
Kane couldnât shake the feeling of familiarity in the enemyâs voice
âIâm not here to kill you. I donât even want to seriously hurt you, because my real contention is with the errant young Sam.â
âHe likes to call himself Enlil, now,â Kane corrected. He struggled to focus his eyes, but the shove of a warm, human-feeling hand left him swinging. âYou want Enlil, so you do whatâ¦lure us out here to hang us up like beef?â
âThe enemy of my enemy isâ¦â
âLet me see your damn face!â Kane growled.
âTouchy, touchy,â the Thrush-thing replied. He stepped back and, finally, Kaneâs vision was clear enough and focused enough for him to see that the metallic-toned voice had come from his own face. Hard, predator-sharp blue eyes glinted to match the cruel smile on the doppelganger Kaneâs lips. It was identical to him, right down to the amount of scruffy beard growth on his jaw and the faint remnant of a scar on his cheek.
Reality Echo
Outlanders>®
How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!
âJean Jacques Rousseau
1712â1778 On the Inequality among Mankind
The deadliest weapon Iâve ever seen used is a lie. It can crumble nations and slay hundreds without effort. Only knowledge and truth can dispel a lieâs wrongs, yet it is a battle to spread the facts, and no truth can revive those who have fallen.
âBrigid Baptiste, scholar and warrior
The Road to Outlandsâ
From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermathâforever known as skydarkâreshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlandsâpoisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforcedâto atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the baronsâ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technologyâ¦a question to a keeper of the archivesâ¦a vague clue about alien mastersâand their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigidâs only link with her family was her motherâs red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grantâs clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, communityâthe very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the cruxâwhen Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldnât do. So the only way was outâway, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltvilleâs head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
